LENOX, Mass. – Shakespeare & Company’s 2023 Gala, slated for Saturday, July 1, will honor Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer and her many contributions to performance, actor training, theater education, and the Berkshires.
The Gala will be held at Shakespeare & Company with both indoor and outdoor components, bringing together artists and individuals from the span of the Company’s history. The evening will begin with a cocktail hour outside of the Tina Packer Playhouse, then move into the theater for a presentation celebrating a retrospective of Shakespeare & Company, as well as a look toward its future.
Following the performance, guests will make their way to the tented Rose Meadow for an elegant dinner served by a Berkshire favorite, The Old Inn On The Green. The evening will conclude with dessert and dancing.
Shakespeare & Company Board of Trustees members Karen Kowgios and Michael Miller (clerk) serve as the gala’s co-chairs. In a joint statement, they spoke to the vast impact Packer has had across many decades and continents.
“It is impossible to list all her accomplishments, gather all of the people she has touched, and recreate all the theater she has directed or acted in,” they said. “We honor all that she has done, the person she is, and look forward to what is next.”
All proceeds from the 2023 Gala will benefit Shakespeare & Company’s Performance, Training, and Education programs, expanding its impact in the Berkshires and around the globe. Limited tickets are still available; single tickets range from $500 to $1,250, while table sponsorships are available from $5,000 to $25,000.
For more information, or to purchase tickets, contact Kristen Moriarty at km*******@sh*********.org or (413) 637-1199 ext. 105.
About Shakespeare & Company
Shakespeare & Company was founded in 1978 by Tina Packer. Located in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Company offers performance, education, and actor-training opportunities year-round, and attracts more than 40,000 patrons annually with a core of more than 150 artists.
About Tina Packer
Born in England, Tina was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, performed in regional theater, was an Associate Artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company, played in television series for the BBC and ITV, and arrived in the U.S. in 1974. She had a Ford Foundation Travel and Study Grant to research the visceral roots of Shakespeare’s plays, and traveled to India, Israel, Italy and the U.S. She co-founded Shakespeare & Company in 1978, and has worked for the Company ever since! She has directed all of Shakespeare’s plays (some of them several times), acted in eight of them (never when directing), and taught the whole canon at more than 30 colleges, including Harvard, M.I.T., and NYU. At Columbia University, she taught in the MBA program for four years, resulting in the publication of Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management with Deming Center for Quality Management at Columbia Business School Professor John O. Whitney for Simon and Schuster. For Scholastic, she wrote Tales from Shakespeare, a children’s book, and recipient of the Parent’s Gold Medal Award. Tina was the subject of the WGBH documentary Sex, Violence, and Poetry: A Portrait of Tina Packer. Tina’s book Women of Will was published by Knopf, and she has performed Women of Will with Nigel Gore in New York, Mexico, England, The Hague, China, and across the U.S. Charlie Rose interviewed Tina about her book Women of Will and she spoke at a TEDx talk about Women’s Voices. Her directing work is currently being written about in a work entitled Shakespeare in the Theatre: Tina Packer by Katharine Goodland and will be published by Bloomsbury-Arden for their Shakespeare in the Theatre Series. S&Co acting credits include Shirley Valentine, Molly Ivins, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Mother of the Maid; Volumnia, Gertrude, Cleopatra, and Edith Wharton several times. She’s the recipient of numerous awards and six honorary degrees, including the Commonwealth Award.
Photo Caption: Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer on stage at the Tina Packer Playhouse. Photo by Shannon DeCelle.
